BHAGAVAD GITA - Comentários filosóficos sobre o livro sagrado indiano com a Prof Lúcia Helena Galvão

Good evening everyone! The idea today is to talk a little bit about a subject that we approach very often at New Acropolis talk a little bit more in details about Bhagavad Gita which is one of the most classic religious books in human history it influences in the west, in the east it is indeed one of the most important sacred books of the Hindu tradition, and today, we want to go through a short summary of its history a little bit of how it was born so we have a historical context, and also understand the main doctrinal

issues dealt within the Bhagavad Gita Bhagavad Gita is a myth. A myth that speaks of man's inner war I even played a little game with you on Power Point showing a little bit of Star Wars, which is a current film In a way, Lucas together with Joseph Campbell you know that the script for this film was done in partnership with Joseph Campbell The one from The Hero with a Thousand Faces They tried to recreate exactly the myth of the inner war Everything that happens within Star Wars is an attempt to replicate with modern images this

classic idea of the inner war Which is the same idea that you will see in Odyssey, the same idea that you will see in Eneida In the greatest classics of humanity So, Bhagavad Gita Gita is the song, the chant. Bhagavad is the Song of the Lord The sublime song In fact it is all about the dialogue between a master and a disciple It is important that we understand India is based on a lot of religious literature You have no idea! Of all kinds and of all natures that you can imagine Now, in terms of epics,

the two great epic poems from India are Mahabarata and Ramayana We had already talked here about Ramayana, a little bit about its story Now in Mahabarata something interesting will happen Because it is much older than the Bhagavad Gita The Bhagavad Gita is part of it It's like saying that there is a book in which a chapter of it is newer than the book itself. How can that be? In fact, about the Mahabarata, no one can say exactly when it was compiled in written language But the Mahabarata with the Bhagavad Gita inside will only appear around

the 4th century B.C. Think about the story of Snow White Imagine that you took this little story that everyone knows That everyone had listen since childhood, who heard since childhood and take that moment when the hunter Leave Snow White in the forest And take that moment and unfold a dialogue between the hunter and Snow White And insert it into the story without changing the context of the whole story, that's what happened with Mahabarata The story has always been the way we know it today But when the moment comes in which there is a war between

two families the Pandavas and Kuravas This was unfolded, opened and a dialogue was inserted inside of it And this dialogue all in poetry, because the Mahabarata is all a great poetry It is very interesting for us to understand that in these civilizations poetry was sacred this was inserted later and from that story of this dialogue, they took the opportunity to insert a doctrinal basis of everything that traditional Hinduism thought about. So Bhagavad Gita is like a miniature of all Indian doctrinaire, which is very big! and practically accepted by all its lines today it is important

that we understand this India, the way it is today does not have a more or less expressive town that doesn't have its own way of practicing Hinduism There are thousands sects with the most disparate thoughts as you can imagine since sects materialists like the Charvakas even those who take one divinity and focus, others focus on another, it's a very big difference we could say that this classic which is the Bhagavad Gita is one of the books that finds the most widespread acceptance everywhere you know that India is home to many trends Many lines of thought

and Bhagavad Gita is one of the classics that has greater universality within this context So come on! Let's get to know it a little bit more Here, the first image that you see, it’s exactly the two protagonists of the story Arjuna e Krishna We can't tell the whole story it's a shame because the story is beautiful, but is huge basically, the story of Mahabarata is the story of India occupation the way they got to Ariavarta, Ancient India and fought the people who lived there you know, you must have a certain notion, we even talked about

it recently that most of the things we now consider to be history was considered as a fantasy for some time Troy was once considered a fantasy Minoan or Mycenaean civilization was considered a fantasy but in a certain moment comes an archaeologist, a researcher, who brings this up there is something that has always been considered a fantasy those descriptions that when the Indians arrived in the Indian subcontinent found people living there and there was a war, and in that war they miscegenated and at a certain moment, the Indus valley civilizations were found, and they are a

mystery to this day cities that are now in Afghanistan that are wonderful relics imagine you, cities the size of an ancient Egyptian city grand relics we have in the Indus valley these civilizations, the combat they waged with primitive India, which was an Indo-European people and the way they predominated on earth, the way they occupied that land, is the story of the Mahabharata Then you will say: but is the book historical or is it symbolic? It's all at the same time! Then it is interesting for us to understand what Helena Blavatsky told about this She used

to say that a work of this size it tends to be both historical, mythical and mystical what does it mean? It tells about facts that really happened It tells about symbolic facts, which you have to interpret and see through them and also tells about moral examples to be followed by humanity which is the mystical part So you can never say, this is just history It has multiple meanings So in the middle of this battle, in the middle of this whole story, at a certain time two cities fight against each other sorry, two families fight for

a city they were Pandavas and Kuravas cousins, from the same root and fought for the reign of a city and when this war starts Arjuna, who was a Pandava prince is led to the battlefield by a master who is Krishna And in the middle of the battlefield he starts asking questions because, think about it, two families relatives among themselves, fighting for the command of a city this causes a whole drama of conscience in this prince Arjuna be fighting against your own relatives and he is reluctant to fight and it is just on that moment that

Krishna, who was the coachman of his chariot reveals himself to him as a deity he explains the reason why this fight is a sacred one what is the meaning of this struggle the battlefield they fought on, which was called Kurukshetra Krisna turns to him and says: even the stars spin more slowly to observe the Earth at this moment and the fight between Pandavas and Kuravas Because the fate of humanity is being decided there Then he shows that it is a war within man Among its superior self and its inferior self between your virtues and your

vices it was a traditional war between what a man is and what it is himself at that moment his defects, his personality weaknesses So, It is at the same time a moral book, because it is mystical a religious text, a sacred book, a philosophical narration, has a lot of history It has a little bit of everything and you will see that it is the same when we take an Odyssey recently we talked about it here everybody knows today that Troy existed in Anatolia, Turkey, there is an archeological pyramid but at the same time, Troy tells

us about the human being and you could find Achilles inside you you could find Ulysses inside you you could find Hector inside of you so it's not one thing or the other, it's all together at the same time and that’s what is amazing about these ancient stories they can be analyzed from different angles and are true by all of them Nowadays we hardly have the habit of analyzing things symbolically and this generates a limit, a limitation So the written story arrives in Europe in 1785 that is, for the first time it is taken from the

context of Hindi, Sanskrit, and is brought into a western language you will see that many of the classics from the East for example, Bardo Thodol, which is the Tibetan Book of the Dead will arrive in the West in 1920 They are millenary books prior to the Christian Era but that the West has come to know very recently and if I tell you that there are still some things that we may not know until today certainly has some very special books that we may not know until today So the idea of this book is to summarize

the fundamental laws of the organization of the universe so that the man can position himself and have a synthesis about what is the life, what are you doing inside of it where do you have to go and what tools do you have I was speaking to you on an occasion that Egypt has what they call the Kybalion, the seven spiritual laws and it is said that it came from Hermeticism Where through seven little phrases, Hermes Trimegistus said it could summarized the laws of the universe Bhagavad Gita is a little bigger book, but it is still

a small one And the book's proposal is very bold It is summing up fundamentally the functioning of life What is a common man, where did he start from, where is he going and how to get there what is the destiny of humanity that is, it is a universal treaty regarding human nature and this is said from a master to a disciple Now, it is interesting and we will have the opportunity to know a little quickly, within our time these characters here is a very classic scene It is very common to find scenes from that moment

on the internet where Arjuna stands at Krisnha's feet and starts asking questions and is he is taught between the two armies facing each other It may seem a little funny to our western mindset that a disciple is having a class in the middle of a battlefield and the two armies waiting calmly But you will see that this also has a historical background for these traditional peoples the war was ceremonial it had a series of agreed symbols while that was not done, the war could not start so, in the middle of the battlefield, this conversation is

the book It's interesting that we have a film, which I already mentioned to you about It is The Legends of Bagger Vance has anyone watched? It is an adaptation made by a modern writer Steven Pressfield of Bhagavad Gita Steven Pressfield, who is a historian and writer of historical novels he constantly quotes the Bhagavad Gita and has great love for that book He adapts the story to the 20th century I don't know if any of you have had the opportunity to read about it a golfer Rannulph Junuh Rannulf Junuh is Arjuna And Bagger Vance, who was

his master, was the Bhagavan was Krishna he makes an adaptation taking the fundamental teachings and showing that they are above time and above space What does war mean in ancient traditions? very briefly considering that we are summarizing in a very short time a book that has difficult and complex truths nowadays we understand war as destruction in fact, even the concept of death here in the West, we have to explain, because in Eastern books, when they say "die" they are not saying "eliminate" When you read Tibetan The Voice of the Silence, it says: "Kill the mind"

It doesn´t mean that you should be mindless it means that you should subordinate it but it will continue to exist but it will continue to exist they don't understand death as elimination like extinction understand death as overcoming a stage, to achieve another they don't believe that anything ceases to exist so it's difficult when you transpose a concept from East to West if I talk about war today it's destruction, it's violence, it's a game of interests for them war is friction and friction is a necessity within the manifested universe I wouldn't be here, walking back and

forth, talking to you, If there was no friction between the sole of my shoes and the floor I would stand motionless on the floor If a being has to grow, has to move he has to overcome the friction and that means he has to leave things behind to conquer new ones professor Jorge Angel Livraga, who founded New Acropolis, used to tell jokes about this He used to say that you can't get to a new place without leaving the first one because there is a very "inconvenient" law of physics which states that a body cannot occupy

two places in space then something will be left behind, so that something new can be born in you and there is a war, a conflict, between these two stages everything that grows is leaving something behind It doesn’t mean that it's bad but because it is no longer the time for that Do you understand this? The shoe you wore at the age of three was not bad it was what fit you at that time but it would be ridiculous if you are still trying to wear it until today Everything has its own moment. So it's a

replacement process which is universal, it belongs to nature in itself So be careful that we don't have prejudice Here is the goddess Athena represents that very well in Greece Athena represents intelligent warfare, wisdom unlike Mars, Ares, who represented this war wilder, the way we understand today So don't understand the Bhagavad Gita as war in the modern and Western sense but war in the Eastern sense, of overcoming, of growth everything came into the universe to grow and to grow you have to leave things behind to make room for new ones to be born well, continuing ...

Some of the main characters that we have to consider The five essential elements of the Bhagavad Gita The city of HASTINAPURA, which was the city they were fighting for the two armies, KAURAVAS and PANDAVAS, who were cousins their parents, parents of the young Kauravas and the young Pandavas were brothers so they were cousins fighting for a city KRISHNA who is the master that represents, within the Indian tradition, a sensitive concept that we in the West do not understand very well The concept of "avatar" have you heard of this word? Krishna is an avatar of Vishnu

The Indian tradition, like most religious traditions, works with the idea of a ternary God a triune a triad or a trinity which is Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva the builder, the maintainer and the destroyer Vishnu is the God who keeps the manifested universe who governs the maintenance of our universe nowadays He appears several times on the Earth in the form of several characters you will see this in Bhagavad Gita in a very beautiful way because Krishna arrives at a certain time and says whenever the world falls into injustice, I come and I become a man among

men to restore the same universal message of love so this Krishna is not an ordinary man he is like a temporary demonstration of the Unity, of the Whole. He plays the role of the divinity itself It's the divinity explaining itself to a man and telling his purpose with the life so it's a sensational thing because he will talk at a certain moment: I created the sun and Arjuna says to him: But how? The sun has always been there! And you are no older than 30 or 40 years He says: you see only my current manifestation

I never stopped being I've always been I made the sun and I will make as many suns come into existence that is, it manifests itself as an episode, in time and space of a being that is beyond time and space he is an avatar of Vishnu So these are the fundamental characters! They are all inside you! In order for you to understand the Bhagavad Gita, you have to try to locate in your consciousness a moment in which you grew up as human beings In which you left behind anger, envy a weakness ... You will see

that a piece of you is left behind that you were closely attached to, and that hurts but a new possibility of seeing the world is born a new possibility to interact with people a new possibility to give answers to life and that rise was usually inspired by some voice the voice of principles, the voice of values your conscience made that trip, which is Arjuna So you notice all these characters inside you If you stop to imagine, and the Bhagavad Gita tells about it all choices that you've ever had have and will have in your life

that look like many, look like hundreds, look like thousands says they are an illusion, that deep down you only have two choices: up or down to the spirit or to the matter All the choices that you have ever had, you can summarize them into two or spirit or matter/body, or sky or earth and the one that goes up is when you choose the Pandavas the one that goes down is when you choose the Kauravas and the conscience that is trying to disidentify and rise is Arjuna This conscience behaves like an elevator looking for its place

And that voice that inspires you to look for the best of yourself that can be through a person, a master through principles taught by this master through a whole doctrinal aspect that you learned in a book that caused you a great stir of conscience that's Krishna's voice it’s what calls you up, it’s what tells you: It’s now! there is no more time to postpone your task of growing up! to become a human being now Can you realize that this is your story? Bhagavad Gita is meaningless if you don´t put yourself within it Hastinapura, is the

city It’s interesting to see, because the city of Elephants we have a lot of prejudices, we cannot talk much about it here, we don't have much time, about civilizations that deal with animals within their pantheons because we don't have a lot of symbolic vision In India the elephant was associated to wisdom for its great strength and at the same time for its delicacy to deal with nature, the ability to it says, I don't know if this is a myth or real that it is able to lift its paws to avoid stepping on a line of

ants that passes by that is, there is strength, there is control, dominated by a greater sensitivity, a spirituality it is a symbol of this so the city of Hastinapura that was being disputed, is a state of higher consciousness that was in dispute And then I brought to you a short summary that we would have to spend a lot of time on it to understand it better but if you pay attention to that triangle and that square for those who study philosophy with us know this structure well Within Indian philosophy is called the Seven Principles of

Consciouness The spirit is a triangle as we said, TRINITY is the most common thing in all religions and the quaternary below is considered the matter, our personality that would be the mind, emotions, energy and the physical body man would be divided between these two worlds who is this man? what are we really? Are we some of those vehicles? When we say: the man is divided between these two worlds Who is the man? Is he neither one of the two worlds? it is said that no what you really are, have you ever stopped to ask it?

who are you? if you feel a physical pain at this moment, your consciousness goes to your physical body if you feel tired, your consciousness goes to your energetic if you get sad it goes to the emotions if you start worrying and thinking about something, it goes to the mind But, what goes? It's like a focus, an eye that sees the world, that travels through all these vehicles, but it is none of these vehicles this is called human consciousness what is evolving in us is our consciousness if you stop to think how many times today we

think about the meaning of our life how much we should be committed to humanity this is the last step our consciousness has raised altruism, fraternity our conscience this little cell that goes up and down like an elevator trough all these vehicles it is who we really are as if it was a little cell of God's body traveling through the manifested universe Making the choice between the lower or the upper part of us identifying itself below or above Just the fact that we recognize that we have two possibilities essence and appearance already means that we are

special beings Arjuna is a special being he knows he can choose from two worlds most people only know down here don't even know that there is another possibility he is the man who at that moment understands the contrast between the two worlds and has to make a choice so, ultimately, we are that higher step that our conscience dared to climb And when all of this is lost, what's left? That cell! that traditions call it Monad, that cell of the Divine which went through all these plans becoming more conscious right? So basically, man would be the

sum of 3 and 4 in India they call it the Seven Principles of Consciousness taking the 3, which is always spirit, or Triad and quaternary, or, as the Greeks call: personality here in the middle of the way is Kurushetra, where Arjuna is and here you have the two warriors Pandavas pulling up, Kuravas pulling down basically it is the battlefield of man I brought you this nice character Dart Vader Who was clearly inspired, as I told you, by Joseph Campbell in these ancient myths The Kauravas represent the personality of man, but not just the personality... the

personality addicted to dominate Because the personality is not bad. What is the personality? The Greeks call personality the "persona", the mask that we use to come into the world which is exactly our physical, energetic, emotional and mental body it is not bad, it is a tool but inured to giving us orders, inured to to master our life and in command it becomes full of addictions then we will see that passions are born, impulses uncontrolled desires because if you think you are this here the good things are those that benefit this here if you think you

are humanity, the good things are what benefit humanity do you understand that conscience creates values according to your identity? so it doesn't mean that the personality is bad it went through a distortion process at that moment of loss of values, where it thinks it is the only one existing and considers itself the center of the universe so the Kuravas are the defects, the bad habbits that we acquire that call all our attention to our personality the worst of them is selfishness to believe that things are valuable only when they serve my personal interests and privates

so these are our friends Kauravas look a little list you can check to see how many Kauravas you know Hypocrisy, pride, arrogance conceit, anger, rudeness Ignorance, anger, laziness Selfishness, vanity, prejudices, fears Sadness, grudge There are too many Kauravas! they are all the elements that inhabit our personality and make it feel like the center of the world and it says that the worst of them, because they all emanate from it, is SELFISHNESS all others come from it and the Pandavas, as we said, represent the beneficial and positive forces that compel man to grow that little voice

that makes you think and consider things from a broader point of view that makes you suffer with the pain of humanity that makes you feel the need to have your life serving to something greater than merely surviving that voice that sometimes keeps you awake because you feel that your day was not very human That you could have done more, could have gone further voices, that compared to the Kauravas, are small, are silent you almost hear a whisper inside you it is no wonder that the Tibetan tradition is called Voice of Silence that is so soft

It sounds like a whisper compared to the noise from the Kauravas but this exists within us! None of us would be interested in philosophy if there weren't these voices within us so, it's the war between these two worlds Arjuna, as I told you represents the conscious aspirant whom which at that moment realizes that he has two worlds and that he has to make a choice there is a very beautiful quote by Nietzche, that I like that he says that man is like an extended rope over the abyss between the animal and the superman a dangerous

move forward step by step a dangerous tremble, hesitate and stop a dangerous resume the way what does that mean? The animal and the superman, the consciousness extended between these two worlds deciding if it will come back and settle for its instincts to its selfishness or whether it will move forward and find the fullness of its spiritual principles and it's a constant hesitation, a steady fear is the fear of the unknown It must be the biggest fear we have, you know? It's the fear of growing up Because you don't know what's on the other side what's

behind may be bad, but at least it's known don’t you find it curious that sometimes a father, a mother who were not happy in their life alternatives want to reproduce exactly that way of life in their children? that didn't work out nice on them? isn't that common? do you know why? It's bad, but at least I know it it is better than the unknown isn't it curious? the fear of growing up and the commitment that it generates, maybe the loneliness maybe having to rebuild your world on another level maybe having to honor what you have

achieved is one of the biggest fears that human beings can have so Arjuna is this human being, who at this moment has this contrast between two worlds and therefore is aware and starts to make a choice don't you think: Arjuna is between these two worlds, he is there in front but we constantly have to make choices and we also have our "Bhagavad Gitas" because what will be, have its roots in the present some of you may remember when I was telling you about the life of Sidharta Gautama, the Buddha it has a beautiful passage from

the life of Buddha that he was telling, when he came to enlightenment about his past incarnations that he had a wife, very beautiful a princess, who at one point became her disciple, for those who know a little about the history and it's said that his disciples said to him: do you remember when you first met the princess? He said, look, I remember that in a past incarnation I was a pearl fisherman and I married her and we lived in misery and one day I went away to look for a pearl that could keep us from

that misery and when I came back with a wonderful pearl, fit for a king I found my wife on the verge of death starving, because in that region there had been a great famine then I left in search of anyone who could exchange that pearl for a good plate of food to save my wife and I did save my wife! in a certain way, what I did now was that, was to change the pearl of my prince's life to enough wisdom to save her life understand that? in a way I perfected what I was doing

life after life I exchanged the pearl of a rich life, full of privileges for a plate of spiritual food to save your life now on another level to save her soul from ignorance, stupidity, death but what you do now, finds roots back there, because otherwise it couldn't be you couldn't have a tree here if you didn't have a little seed back there do you know what that means? That we will never be Arjuna if the seed of Arjuna is not in us now if we don't constantly have this conscious contrast and cannot distinguish which option

takes us up, which option takes us down Arjuna, as a seed, must be here now! because otherwise he will never be Interesting that phrase, which is taken from another sacred book which is the Dhamapadda, from the Buddhist tradition, which says Greater than the conquest in battle of a thousand times a thousand men, is the conquest of yourself more than beating a thousand men in battle it is glorious and heroic who overcomes himself you realize that this is not just poetry, this is real! if I fight against you I know all the time where you are

and that you are my enemy and I know who I am now if I'm fighting something inside me, do you realize that I get confused with the enemy? there are times that I think he and I just one or I hand the gun over to him to kill me The inner war requires a level of identity, of discernment that the external one doesn't normally need so much you know all the time who are you on the battlefield and who is the enemy nobody gets confused in the middle of the battlefield, about who he is and

who the enemy is The inner war requires a very deep level of discernment, identity and it's much more difficult to succeed than winning a thousand external battles this is a fact! Krishna, as I told you is an appearance in the world from Vishna there comes a series of details today, one of the main lines of Hinduism is the Vaishnava line, which are Vishnu's disciples Vishnu according to the Indian tradition, will appear ten times, have already appeared nine Krishna would have been the eighth incarnation of Vishnu then everything has a symbolism, and we will have no

time to discuss but it is said that when Krisna left the world, when he disincarnated, humanity entered a great materialistic cycle what they call Kali Yuga Krishna's death would have been 3.102 years before Christ it marks the beginning of Kali Yuga The iron age that we live in; the most materialistic era everyone will say: "But this is an injustice, I was born in the most materialistic era" According to the Indian tradition the man, he has to learn to be a golden man regardless of whether the world is going through an iron age because if you

are a product of the environment, the merit is not yours, the merit is of the environment You would have to be able to be golden although the world is made of iron and the nature varies between gold phases and iron phases exactly to wake up the man like a blacksmith forging a sword that plunges into icy water and puts on fire so that this sword becomes so temperate that neither water nor fire are able to break it so, in fact, we could be born at any time and according to that tradition, nothing would take away

from us the obligation to build ourselves independent of the environment It is common to see, just making a parallel with our historical moment people who say: "I went bankrupt because the economic moment is bad" even in these more limited areas of life, such as the economy, a person who is well prepared for the circumstances sometimes in crisis, instead of falling, they rise if you analyze it economically, there are companies that are going up in the middle of the crisis not necessarily because they are dishonest but because they know how to move in the middle of

a crisis ... predict that the economy is unstable do not expect the environment to be perfect for them to work are prepared to respond to the circumstance whatever it is sometimes, for a little "elbow pain" say: "this can't be honest" It can! the person can be prepared for the circumstances and it can keep going up, even though circumstances go down although the circumstances are not favorable he may be well man can be a product of himself, not of the environment. In short, this is the story! So Krishna announces the beginning of a Hard Age but

it's still man's obligation to be a golden man although the age is iron Then I talk a little about these internal words which is very interesting because it's the high contrast This is an idea that is very important, which is also an Indian idea. The Contrast Theory when you have two colors, you notice both if the entire universe were just one color, you would have no sense of colors you notice two sounds when you produces the contrast between the two because if the universe had only one sound all the time you wouldn't recognize the sound

do you know that? Pythagoras said that in the universe a note sounds all the time which is the music of the spheres and we don't recognize it because it doesn't stop without contrast there is no awareness So if man doesn’t recognize Krishna’s voice within it does not generate this contrast it will not grow from the point of view of consciousness if he does not look within himself for what he has of most noble, highest if he doesn't look within himself for what is most human and compare with the rest it will not generate this contrast

that will generate a spark of fire which is the conscience will not have a chance to grow Some people say there is a possibility that man will go through life with its biological cycle fulfilling perfectly what nature dictates without conscience moving it is possible that man will only survive, not live because if there is no advance of consciousness human life didn't even begin As the Greeks say, he never even entered Cronos he has not yet entered time from a human point of view, he is stationed at zero point then man can and must find Krishna's

voice within himself every time he gets ready to establish a contrast between two worlds and make a more conscious choice and grow and this is about when all this is over what do you think will be important? after the last breath... after all of our life has been left behind it will only be worth what we grow up as conscious beings and that we allow the others to grow through ourselves nothing else will be left it is the only thing left therefore we are only alive when we work to make it Hapen so that our

lives, as human beings, happen Well, then speaking briefly to you about the main doctrines that you have within the Bhagavad Gita of course this is a complex matter to talk about in such a short time Dharma and Karma I consider perhaps, along with the septenary constitution that was the one that I showed you of our essence and our appearance are the most important laws for us to understand life I wonder how we step ourselves on life without knowing how does this game work from where we are coming, to where are we going and how it

goes, what are the laws we interact with how to live, considering that life is chaos or a game whose rules nobody told you I remember I was 14 or 15 on one occasion I talked to a colleague and said the following: I have the impression that I sat at a game table and they gave me several cards in my hand and the game is running and I'm just throwing cards on the table and nobody tells me what are the rules of the game... Who wins, and wins what? Who loses, and loses what? And where do

we want to go with this it's exactly the feeling that we have nobody explained to us what is the rules of the game what's the point of all this for me, one of the most useful and complex teachings in the doctrines of all ancient philosophies is exactly that of Dharma and Karma The Dharma, as it is said in India, it is the arm of God extended in the Cosmos it is a law that calls all beings towards unity that is, all beings came into the world to be able to grow again towards unity, increasingly aware

That is, the entire Universe is called to return to the Father's house, as the Jewish tradition says that is, to evolve into increasingly noble states of consciousness and this line, this road that leads us towards unity is the Dharma line Now, of course every being, when it starts to learn something, is subject to errors We just arrived in the world, we don't understand the laws of the world we deviate from this Dharma law This deviation, which is natural, that is expected at the beginning every time you deviate from the Dharma will have a reaction painful

that tends to make you aware that you went away and come back then you will have the dance of Dharma and Karma that is this here: A law that takes you back to the One and a variation around it every time you deviate, a pain comes that pushes you back do you realize that this is similar to Newton's Laws, but in the metaphysical plane? every action generates a reaction of equal intensity in the opposite direction it's the same idea, there's a lot of logic both physical and metaphysical and this law of nature whose cause causes

reactions that bring you back cause and effect is the law of Karma that does not exist to punish you or to hurt you but to help you find your way why do you think your tooth hurts when you have a problem? Because nature plots against you and makes you suffer? no, it wants you to save your tooth! Because if it didn't hurt, it would fall without you realizing it had a problem the pain is a vehicle of consciousness Now this one would be the path that is expected Remember a child who learns to walk when

she takes the first step you expect her to fall take the second step, you expect it to fall but by the tenth, by the twentieth step, you expect her to be a little more standing, right? around the thirtieth, the fiftieth, a little bit more that is, she learns from mistakes until one day she gets the balance now, when man does not recognize the laws of the universe how is the trajectory of the human being? when he doesn't learn from life? how is it? he deviates from the law and begins to suffer it's the other's fault,

it's the father's fault, it's the mother's fault It's the boss's fault! It's the neighbor's fault! Look how I suffer! I'm a victim! How is anyone going to feel sorry for me? When will that change? We have to change the government, we have to change the policy we have to change the religion, I have to change the marriage I have to change my mother-in-law, I have to change my boss, everyone is against me Right? and doesn't learn from the pain or learn? Do you think that everyone that you know who suffers are growing? we have a

"wonderful" invention, which is to blame everything on the other and solves, for a while, but has a serious problem the other one grows, because he has a problem, you don't nobody is responsible for anything How could we call a person who is not responsible for anything? irresponsible, isn't it? and the irresponsible doesn't grow So nature expected this of us, that we learn from the pain taking responsibility for it and seeing pain as symbolic and this was causing us to be tracking the path when we do that which is victimization and the transfer of guilt the

pain only makes us increasingly stop in the same place find guilty people at the four corners of the world we live today the theory of irresponsibility everyone is to blame for your problems but you and more and more we are stuck on that same point and suffering doesn't make us move even a millimeter this is not a problem of nature, they are problems of human learning who didn't understand, basically, how the laws of nature work Karma as I put it there, it is not a punishment, it is not hitting you so that you suffer he

is hitting you so that you learn through pain and find the way again there are morbid pains, there are pedagogical pains this is a morbid pain, this is a pedagogical pain Do you understand? there are positive pains, there are negative pains like everything in the universe Soul immortality A very beautiful part in this book because Arjuna is crying for having to fight against his relatives and there comes a time when Krishna comes to him and says, "Actually Kunti's son it's interesting because there are some parts in this book in which you notice how all these

religious traditions are similar at their roots isn't it curious that you get to an Indian book and suddenly Krishna comes and says "Truly I tell you!" Ó son of Kunti You find this there several times There was never or will be a time when I you or any of those princes of the Earth have ceased or will cease to exist what is, it is forever so don’t think you’re going to kill something real that there is a possibility to kill something real everything is illusions you will simply comply with the Dharma that tells you not

to be here anymore, to be ahead but all two states are eternal there is nothing that really dies or something that is really born all that is, it is forever this is the notion of reality from the ancient Indian Tradition is eternity ... what is, it is eternally So for this tradition the idea of the immortality of the soul is part of a logic of knowledge of the universe things can't stop being, because if they do, they never were it's just shadows, just illusions human nature is part of a real world where things never cease

to be and what we live in is a game of illusions but that has a learning to be collected through it it's like I'm playing WAR with you I am not at war with you it's just a game but it's a game that if you want to beat me, you have to know the rules right? have you ever played WAR? Did you play with that when you were teenagers? I loved I'm not at war with her, but the game has rules, despite being a joke, an illusion, it has rules and if you don't obey these

rules you won't beat me and these rules will require from you insight, attention, concentration through obedience to these rules you will acquire virtues the game is not real but your virtues are real if you learn from it you will come out bigger than you got in, do you know? and this is reality when you press the game button and the screen disappears what was left? all the skills you developed when playing it because this is real do you think that life is more real than a game screen it's more or less the same, sometime someone

will press a button and all of this will disappear and another very similar scene comes and only what you have developed internally will remain Right Action It's a very interesting thing Krishna will tell Arjuna that the only way to overcome this world of illusions is through right action because if everything is illusory, what will you want? if everything is dust, will you want dust? you have to transfer your desires to a place where they can acquire something real the Buddhist tradition will talk about this in a very beautiful way, which is the Right Action if

you are looking for right action the noble eightfold path which is the right intention, the right way of life the right concentration what are you looking for, actually? not the fruit not the result of your action but that the way you do it is human I am not satisfied with whether or not I obtained an external result but by the way I acted was human it doesn't matter if I won the world or if I won nothing or that I lost everything, it matters that whoever examines my path will see that it was a human

being who came by I answered the circumstances as a human being now the results are illusory, winning or losing is a very circumstantial thing and somethimes with very little practical value in fact, who gains or loses something in the material world I made jokes with you one of these days I wonder: a man puts a fence on a piece of land and says "this land is mine" the land probably laughs a lot of us, right? because how many billions of years ago has this land been there and a poor fellow who is going to live

70, 80 years old thinks he owns it don't you think this is a joke? it's a joke! actually what can we gain from this relationship with the land? the fact that we behave as human beings and she as Earth each one doing what corresponds to us the Earth will germinate I will generate values, virtues, wisdom what's left of my relationship with her is just that each one has fulfilled their role in this drama of existence but owning one or owning the other, that's stupid. Who owns what? it's all a big illusion and the only thing

that will remain of all this is the way we deal with things because this is real when you turn off the game button, the only thing that will remain is the virtue that you developed by the way you handled the factors of the game because he learned from righteousness. The game was worth it! because righteousness is real although the game is all just an illusion left when you pressed the button the play button takes everything! but it doesn’t take the virtues you’ve developed So, the right action is one that seeks the way you act and

not the fruits of action and says that one day the action will be so complete that man will not expect anything at all but acting like a human being on the day that the human being can have that total purity this total absence of desires, he will have come to wisdom it is the essence of Bhagavad Gita! that says it frees man from the illusory world, the pain, the suffering I won't go into too much detail because this is a material that was prepared for a longer time than we have today but Krishna, among many

other things came to talk about forms of movement in the world that the man have to move himself if you are standing in a chair inside you your feelings your thoughts are in motion and this generates Karma it influences other people even if you don't say a word your feelings and your thoughts add to or subtract from those of humanity, did you know that? you are alive, you are generating an influence there is no inaction, you are in the world, you are acting inaction is: "I died"! it's the only way I even commented to you

about it a doctor, that he has a theory that people die on average, two or three years after retirement and there is a high incidence of people dying and he did some research to try to find out because it happened in the United States, specifically and he created a theory that is controversial, I don't know if it is real or not he said the following: people spend their whole lives saying "I will stop working and I won't do anything!" "I will put my feet up, I will not do anything!" and he says, "the man programs

his mind" and the body performs when you say "I will not do anything!", what will your body understand? will die, because if you're alive, you'll be doing something that is, there is no possibility of inaction He will talk about the three types of action or you find the perfect action which is the Right Action what he calls Sattva which is one that seeks nothing more than your fulfillment as a human being or you overdo it with anger, impulse or you fall short of the action, by inertia when you overdo it with anger, with impulse, this

is called "Rajas" when you fall short, inertia, that word so "cute" called laziness this is "Tamas" so it's like a triangle of possibility for action in the world from one side the excess cholera, the impulse on the other side, inertia and at the top "Sattva" which is the action balanced, the Right Action Do you remember anything about this triangle? any other symbology? a triangle resembles a little manger when on one side you have an ox or a bull and on the other, a donkey the ox, the bull, is always associated with the impulse anger, instinct

and the donkey inertia the one who stops, the one who gets stuck and at the top of the manger, who was there? Christ that represents the balance when you set this up in your living room at Christmas did you know you're talking about a universal myth that comes many millennia more than you can imagine? an action plan down there inertia or excess and the balance inspired by something nobler, higher, that is within man and not outside the Right Action So, every time you see Christmas cribs from now on remember the Bhagavad Gita! I'm not going

to go into much detail about it here, but I told you that according to the Indian tradition and this is sometimes difficult for a western man to assimilate all these beings that came to humanity to bring messages, to remind the man who he is and where does he have to go with all this they were messengers of a single idea messengers of unity anywhere, at any crossroads in the space / time where they lived adapting their language to that context, they were talking about only one thing of how man can come home Therefore, Krishna says:

"Whenever the world decays in virtue and justice I come, the Master, and become a man among men " Ever! so all these beings would be talking about a single message of a single idea and it sometimes seems complex to people because we tend to think that one brought this idea do you realize that with this we are projecting our selfishness outside? it cannot be the master of wisdom who enlightened the East millennia ago it has to be just this one! It cannot be another In a way, if I try to limit the possibility of transmission

of wisdom we are showing our own selfishness outisede This tradition of Indian avatars says that there is a commitment of the divinity of being among men whenever men need her Helena Blavatsky uses a concept she calls "Dynamic Eternity" It's very beautiful! she said that if you look at all these stars that exist in the sky are numerous suns and that in all directions there must be numerous planets and that perhaps, countless beings, on the same level as us or perhaps more advanced and that in all directions there must be masters calling these beings in some

direction they cannot imagine what languages these masters speak nor what words do they use but what they say, she knows! they call all the children back home All nature back to Unity! Do you understand that? I can't even imagine who they are or what language they speak but what they say I know they are calling the children back home and she’s not talking about here, she’s talking about the four corners of the universe The "Universum", towards the Uno Each human being is, to some extent, an Arjuna, a warrior who tries to be better, who tries

to conquer his virtues Basically this is a small summary as I told you, it is not a work that we approach, in great detail in such a short time but just so that you have an idea of the greatness, the universality, of how much it has to teach it is difficult for me to meet a person who reads the Bhagavad Gita with attention, with affection and do not put that book among your bedside books and it's really worth it I wonder how many beautiful things and that we sometimes put at the end of the queue

in relation to certain immediate needs of ours how many insane and silly things we read without having read a book like that If we had a society that really cared about education of the human being in the sense of educating, bringing the best of himself maybe we would make a more conscious list of our mandatory readings and this is a book that could not be missing it is not only Indian, it is universal, regardless of religious beliefs it is also a treatise on philosophy that deals with how to achieve the true human condition and where

do we want to go with all this and what tools to use Well, this is what I brought to you but as I said, the time is very short so we focused it into some very simple ideas and I hope they can be useful I know that some of you have already had contact with this work and those who haven't yet I invite you not to miss the opportunity because it is really worth it it's a world heritage site!